It’s hard to even begin to tell you how much I am just done with Facebook.

Lately, it feels like being in an abusive relationship, the one abused being my brain. Like anyone, I started a relationship with Facebook because it was fun, free, and let me stay in better contact with friends. But as time progressed, the conveniences were outweighed by the issues it caused. Not being able to post everything, since employers can see; being inundated by clickbait that does nothing but eat up all my time; and the general responsibilities of maintaining an online persona. Even worse, if I do decide to break up with Facebook, I will most likely lose contact with a lot of faraway friends who have accounts. Also, I won’t know when anyone’s birthday is.

This isn’t a real issue, really. It has nothing on the presidential race, #BlackLivesMatter, gun control, and whatever else the current hot button flavor of the week is – because all these are real issues, but the way we jump from one to another puts even my ADD to shame. But the problem isn’t Facebook. That’s just the convenient face the internet is wearing in this analogy. The problem is that the internet is a never ending rabbit hole I can’t help but race down without any attempt to stop. It’s junk food, and though I don’t necessarily think I’d be slim and fit without it, I can’t help but hate myself for the degree to which I’ve allowed myself to binge on empty calories.

For every train time I look up, there are five actors I look up on IMDB. For every video of a relative I watch, there are ten of a pug doing something cute in a pool. For each single convenience this relationship offers me, there are a hundred reasons why it’s not worth it. I have been in real romantic relationships with this caveat before and, spoiler alert, they were all really toxic relationships. And as far as I see, I can do the following:

Quit and just deal with the fact that I will need to make an effort to keep friendships another way (the most efficient solution).

Suck it up (the easy option I will probably take).

Are those my only two options? Either do some hard work, or shut down like Jenners, taking the way out that’s easier in the moment even though it’s destructive in the long term? To be lost in the vaccuum of my own opinions or sorrows? Or do I chance going out there, sifting through the garbage for something worth not throwing out? Something worth keeping and holding onto?

Whether it’s clickbait or the real events that affect our world at large (and hell, even clickbait can be in that category sometimes), it’s hard to argue that the world sometimes sucks. Okay, a lot of the time. It sucks, and you can’t agree with it or abide by it. It’s so tempting to close yourself off from it, but at what cost? Leaving the world behind would be so lonely. So, maybe there is some shitty stuff out there. But you can’t get to the good without wading through the bad. And if there’s one thing Facebook does do right, it’s acknowledging that you can’t do it alone.